Close Encounters 8: From Russia With Love
It took Beckett entirely too long to get her focus; she kept hearing Castle growling and grumbling behind her and Black making snide comments about which photos to keep. She ignored them as best she could and laid out the projections and the data Black had collected, going over it and over it.
She couldn't fault the data. It was all there.
The irradiated plutonium coming into the plant, according to the government's statistics, was far less than what the plant had to be processing each day. The number of workers, the amount of hours, the processing speed - the math bore out the hypothesis.
Vadim had been given extra plutonium to reprocess, therefore giving him enough more to turn around and sell.
"The money," she murmured, eyeing the banking records that Black had been looking at. Vadim hadn't been doing it alone; there had to be a money trail leading back to whoever this was in the underground facility.
"Get the fuck off me," she heard.
Kate turned and saw Castle at the far table, gathering file folders and running roughshod over his father's attempts to stop him. He was ruining the neat organization, but they were all labeled; it wasn't like Black didn't have the time to redo it. She didn't feel sorry for him - let him sit in his freaky cave and put it all back together.
"Castle," she called out. He lifted burning eyes to her and she sighed. "This is gonna be weeks of therapy, isn't it?"
The fierceness and the rage broke in his eyes, filtered out into something more controllable even as he gruffed a laugh. It wasn't much, wasn't really all that convincing, but she'd take it.
"Yeah," he rasped. "More I see, more I want to blow shit up."
"Blowing shit up? We can do that. But I need your help," she said quietly. "We're going to have to close down that facility, but we've got to have all the information first."
Castle had file folders clutched in a death grip, but he lowered his head and seemed to make the effort. She saw him shoot his father a dark look, but then he came towards her and thumped the folders on the table next to her, still gripping them hard.
She shot the stack an uneasy look and lifted her eyes to his. At least some of that terrible grief was gone she saw. At least there was that.
"Castle, honey, what exactly you gonna do? Carry those around with us every we go?"
"No," he got out. "I'm fucking burning them. Give me five minutes and then I'm all yours. Yeah?"
She bit her lip but nodded at him. He needed to do this, needed to destroy it. Vadim was dead and he couldn't touch his father - this was all he had left.
Castle held out his hand to her. "Come with me. You're not staying here alone with him."
Kate glanced to Black but she slipped her arm through Castle's and followed back down the tunnel towards the car.
She watched him rummage in the trunk of the company car, crossed her arms over her chest at the cold air of the cave. She didn't know what he was planning on doing, some kind of ceremony or just trashing the whole thing without a second glance, but she wished he'd get on with it.
He popped back up with a satisfied grimace on his face, a kind of. . .weapon held in one hand, the files tucked under his other arm. The gun was rifle-length with a pump or tank attached to the stock. Instead of a normal muzzle, the weapon's barrel was caged like-
"A flame-thrower," she gasped. "Castle, are you out of your mind?"
"I'll be careful. I'll do it in here so no one out there picks up on the heat signature."
She gaped at him. "That is not what I mean. It's a flame-thrower."
"I know how to aim."
"Our bathroom says otherwise." She rolled her eyes and came carefully towards him. "Look, I know you're. . ."
When he narrowed his eyes at her, she let that thought go and tried again.
"A flame-thrower inside a cave isn't a good idea, sweetheart. Pockets of gas, the close quarters-"
"Pockets of gas? It's not a mine. And we're surrounded by rock - that's not flammable. All that will go up are these damn photos."
Kate made the effort to relax, release her fists, take a breath. "I'm sure they have a cigarette lighter in that bag - the way those guys smoked? Yeah, just let me find one for you, okay? Castle, let me get a lighter."
She moved for the trunk of the car without waiting for an answer, but at least she didn't hear him starting up that damn flame-thrower. A flame-thrower, really? He'd lost it; he really wasn't thinking clearly, and it was all her fa-
No. It was not her fault. It was his father's fault for orchestrating this whole damn thing, and it was the nature of the job, and it was. . .a host of other things. And while she had some responsibility, there was also Castle himself.
He felt guilty over what he'd done to his father in that alley, and he was angry because he felt guilty, and he was sublimating all of it into this wounded rage over the things Vadim had done to her - the things his father had seen her doing back.
It sucked. It really did, and she bet they had another few weeks of daily therapy - she hadn't been kidding - but it was survivable. It was surmountable, if only she could keep him with it.
"Thank God," she sighed, tugging the red lighter out of the outside pocket. "Here. Look. Castle. Here you go."
He scraped it out of her hand, tossed the flame-thrower back into the trunk. She swallowed hard and followed him to a broken stalagmite that jutted from the floor like a crystal in a broken and busted Fortress of Solitude.
Castle stood there for a moment and she waited, not sure what came next, not sure she should interrupt whatever was going on in his head. He flicked the lighter suddenly and it flamed up, bright and yellow, that center of blue flame, his thumb on the wheel and he stared at it a long, long time.
Kate reached for the file folders under his arm and carefully took them from him. She didn't know if he'd truly kept the photos out that he might need in the review, but they'd burn all of these, every single one from this week, regardless.
She opened the top folder and winced, tried not to think about what Castle must see when he looked at this, the twisted and deprecating look on her face, the cruelty in Vadim's ugly mouth, the bruises already marring her skin.
Damn.
"Don't look," he rasped and his large hand came to cover the photos. She dragged her gazed up to him and his mouth was curled down, struggling against some heavy emotion. "Let me just burn them."
She nodded and offered the file folders, but he shook his head and took up the top photograph, held it up to the lighter, his eyes staring deep into the flame.
Or maybe he was memorizing the photo. She hoped not.
He touched the fire to the picture and it smoked, curled, shriveled in the dance of flame. When it had shrunk to almost nothing, just the barest piece left between his thumb and forefinger and the fire greedily licking towards his skin, almost too late Castle released it to the jagged top of the broken stalagmite, letting it burn to a mere blackened worm.
He reached over and heavily took the next photo.
And then he lit it as well.
She closed her eyes and tried to keep back the frustration.
He was going to do them one by one.
Castle gazed at the blackened pile of scraps, the wizened remains of every last photograph of what had happened to her in Mayak, and he wished it were that simple, that easy.
It seemed to be for her.
He swallowed down the acrid taste of burning plastic and chemicals, and then he turned away from the pyre.
"Flame-thrower would've felt better," he muttered.
She caught his arm as he moved past and he couldn't not touch her back after that, couldn't let her think it mattered between them - what the job required. Because it didn't. It wasn't that.
It was having to do it at all, having put her there and having to endure Vadim, and then his father just-
Yeah, he couldn't do that. He couldn't go back there. Had to go forward.
Her fingers laced with his, but she kept cautiously away from him, giving him the moment, the space, but he hated space, hated distance between them and he tugged on her hand and pulled her into him.
He didn't even have to say it; she wrapped her arm around his neck, their joined hands coming up to his chest and her mouth opened against his and breathed, softly and with an urgency he couldn't deny.
So he kissed her, he took it, even though he knew that it would all come breaking through those neat, easy compartments in his head. It would.
He just hoped it wouldn't be soon.
She could tell by his face that they didn't have near enough information as Black liked, but Castle seemed to want to simply get it done. Castle wanted to bomb the place into oblivion; Kate, unfortunately, sided with Black. She just couldn't do that - not knowing what was down there - she needed more information.
Beckett sifted through the material again, something prodding at her, something that didn't quite make sense, but she couldn't get at it. Vadim's group were selling reprocessed nuclear materials and this underground facility. . .she couldn't make the pieces fit. The puzzle didn't add up.
"We need more information," she said finally, looking up from the files. She nudged Castle with her foot and he glanced at her and then back to the computer.
"Beckett."
"We can't bomb the place when we just don't know."
"Beckett, this isn't that kind of-"
"Castle," she said harshly, saw Black watching them. She pressed her lips together and ran her hand down her face. "Can we talk?"
Castle jerked upright and stared at her, then he glanced over his shoulder and she saw the understanding swim across his face. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I-"
She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "Don't be sorry. Walk with me."
She stood and he came with her, pushed her towards the tunnel and back towards their vehicles in the anteroom. Beckett breathed in the humid, cool air of the cave and felt Castle at her side, a warm and restless energy coming off of him. She knew he wanted to just be done with it, but she couldn't do her job like this.
"Rick," she said quietly.
"I know," he gruffed. "I understand."
"We're the closest team on the ground; I'll give you that. But Mitchell's black ops guys will be here in eight hours. We go in, do some recon, take stock so that they know what they're dealing with."
"That sounds sensible, Kate, but this is a time-sensitive case here. We need immediate action."
"Eight hours. That's what I'm asking for. We can't bomb the place not knowing the consequences to all those people, Castle. If they've got active nuclear materials down there it could contaminate the whole region."
"You know how many nuclear accidents have been swept under the rug in Mayak?"
"At least one of near-Chernobyl proportions - I read the brief," she said softly. "That's why we can't do this to them. It can't be us. Just because their own government did it first doesn't make it okay."
"I know," he said roughly, shaking his head and leaning back against the rock wall. She stayed close, within the range of his body heat, and lifted her fingers to his chest, stroked the cotton of his shirt. "Kate, this job just - they ask for too much. They ask for more than we should have to give."
"Castle, that's the reason I'm out here. To do things differently. To make sure that we don't have to give too much."
"But Kate. . .what you did working Vadim - that's what I'm talking about here, now. I know we've been trying to demolish the old way, but it's clear to me now. Sometimes you do what you have to do. There's a time and place for being righteous but the real world requires compromise."
She felt the burn start in her chest and flare in her tear ducts, the tightening in her face as she turned her head and closed her eyes. Compromise. Was that how he saw her now? Compromised.
"No, Castle. No." She clenched her fists. "Some things - we can't do. We can't compromise."
"I don't understand," he said again, a rough murmur of his voice. "Why is it okay for you, but not okay for me?"
She scrubbed a hand under her eye and sucked in a breath. But she didn't have words for it, the certainty she felt that they just couldn't. Vadim had been different. Vadim had been just herself, battered for a greater cause. This was nuclear.
His arm came around her shoulders and drew her in closer, his mouth at her temple, breathing. She knew his silence was because he didn't have the answers either. In the past year, running CIA missions in Eastern Europe without his father's influence, they'd truly started to change things, to make things different. Ask questions first; shoot later - that had been their unofficial motto.
It had worked. It did work. It could still work.
She took another breath and steadied herself. "I don't want to blow it up not knowing. We said - we said we'd gather intelligence primarily, refer it up the chain of command. With Vadim, that was all I was doing."
"By letting him-"
"Castle," she said firmly. "I never broke our vows."
He went still and stiff against her, the clutch of his fingers in her hair and then that slow release. "I believe you. I know you. I know."
"I wasn't compromised."
He growled and his arm was like a steel band at her shoulders. "Did I say that? That's not what I think. I just don't want this life for us anymore. I don't want it. And if that means I take the risk of contaminating Mayak, Russia, with nuclear fallout, fuck it. I just want us out of here."
She sighed and cupped the back of his head with her palm, nudged his cheek with her lips in a brushing kiss. "Okay. Okay. But I can't do that. Eight hours, sweetheart. Give me eight hours and then we get out of here."
He dipped his head to her shoulder and breathed out. "Eight hours, Beckett."
"As soon as you two make a recon report, I'll have to call the Russians," Black said grimly. At least the man had been on his best behavior since she and Castle had gotten back to the main cave. No more of those sneering, self-important comments, although Kate had felt his eyes on her as they'd gone over the information.
"That's a bad idea," Castle grunted. "You can't do that. You let the Russians know we're stomping around in their yard and you're gonna have world war three on your hands."
"Not if I'm the one who calls."
Castle snorted but Kate pressed her thigh against his at the table, waited for Black to explain.
"I know the head of the FSB. I'll explain that we've discovered some terrorist arms dealing going on. I'll keep you out of the details, the whole operation, of course. But they have to know - we send in Mitchell's ground team to eliminate these guys and they're going to have to know. But before that, we have you two secure whatever sensitive material is there, keep it out of the Russians' hands as well."
Beckett hated to be agreeing at all with Black. But he was right. For the sake of international peace, they had to let the Russians know what was going on. "The Russians will figure out we've been there anyway. It's better to tell them."
"I'll drag my feet on it," Black said finally. "But it has to be done."
"The Russians aren't gonna be happy," Castle muttered. "They'll want to take over the clean-up and securing the plutonium. It's gonna get messy."
"It's what has to to be done," she said. He shot her a baleful look.
Kate glared at him and Castle glared back, but he finally relented with a slump of his shoulders, acting very much like a child. "Fine. Call the Russians. But only after we've uploaded images to the server, identified our targets."
"And the ground team," Kate added. "Gotta give them a chance to get in place."
"Seven hours now," Black said, glancing at the computer. "I'll call when they've reported in to me."
Castle grunted. "Shit. I really wanted to blow something up."
Beckett let the smile flicker across her face and turned back to his father. "We need supplies," she said quietly. Asking and not asking Black for those things.
Castle took over, leaning his elbows against the table. "Black, you got winter gear here? We're in sweats - don't even have coats. We need some heavy duty stuff. And binoculars, a food kit, water, you know the drill."
"I have those things," Black said slowly and then his face shifted, cracked like a cliffside was breaking off and falling into the sea. "Like old times, son."
Oh, shit. That was a smile on Black's face. Kate wrapped her arms around her waist but Castle wasn't smiling back. In fact, his eyes had gone that blank, slate grey.
His father was dead to him, truly.
She swallowed and cleared her throat. "Where's your all-weather gear? We need to get going."
It took Black a beat to gather himself, but then he was turning stiffly towards a stack of containers along the wall and pulling out army fatigue pants, lined jackets. "I don't have anything to fit her."
Beckett reached out while Black's back was to them, and she touched Castle's shoulder. He gave her a bleak look.
"I'll figure something out. Even a man's coat is fine."
He nodded and glanced back to his father. "What about phones? Beckett's was pulverized at the motel and we didn't have a chance to get a new one."
Black lifted, holding out a coat and a fleece all-weather jacket. "No extra phone. Don't even have extra weapons. I'm not prepared to outfit a team here. This is what I've got."
Castle growled but snatched the coat, tossed it over to Beckett. She caught it and bit her lip. "We've got the weapons from Vadim. And Castle - you've got your phone still. That's all we need. It's not like we're splitting up."
His hands were clenched around the edge of the jacket.
She sighed. "Castle. In and out. We do some recon and then the team cleans it up and we get out of here."
He nodded tightly and drew his arm around her waist, pulled her roughly against him, his mouth to her temple.
"Then I want to take you somewhere we can be alone," he whispered. "Just us."
She shivered and pressed her cheek to his. "Me too."
But they had a job to do first.
"I don't think this is our best option," he said clearly.
"It's what we've got," she insisted.
Castle sank back down on his haunches and handed her the binoculars, flexed his fingers for the water. They switched and she inched upwards over the cragged face of the rock formation, her elbows digging in as she positioned herself, and Castle took a quick swig of water.
It was freezing out here; not even the thermal wear could keep that harsh wind off his face.
"Best option is to get the fuck out of here and let Black clean up his own shit," Castle grumbled, leaning his head back against the outcropping of rock and staring up at the stars.
"Castle," she muttered, clearly more than through with his whining. "We've had this conversation."
Well, tough shit. He felt like whining. He didn't want to be doing recon work just so another team could go in and play nice with the Russian government. He wanted to crush something, wanted to collapse the ceiling in on their heads like stomping on an anthill.
He wanted to grind to dust Vadim's whole enterprise, and it was just galling enough that the man was already dead and couldn't see it. "You promised to let me blow shit up."
"I did," she said testily. "But I was hoping for the super spy and not the child."
"I'm not a child."
"You're acting like-" She cut off her own sentence with a growl and wriggled back down next to him, slapped the binoculars against his chest. "Stop it. Right now. I'm not having this in the middle of an op."
He shut his mouth. She was right, but he was pissed. Over everything. His rage had been siphoned off, but the beast it fed was still there, a yowling, hungry thing in his chest. He wanted someone to break for this.
"You agreed to this," she said quietly.
He had. And this was their lives; he knew that. So he flipped over onto his belly with the binoculars held close to his chest and crawled back up to the top, looked again.
The entrance to the underground facility was hauntingly similar to Black's - a tumble of rocks from the far flung hills, a scraggle of stunted trees and underbrush after a long and frozen field of steppe. Nothing untoward, nothing to be seen.
Except now a black jalopy was speeding over an invisible dirt track, lights off.
"Beckett," he murmured. She was instantly at his side on the rock formation, her shoulder pressed to his, peering through the darkness.
He handed over the binoculars. "Two o'clock, approaching from the north."
She hummed something like satisfaction as she studied their new arrival, and he felt that telltale flush of arousal and excitement heat him up again. Suddenly the thermal gear, the coat were too much and he yanked his thin gloves off and stuck them into the pocket of his cargo pants.
She gave him the binoculars back and as their fingers touched, sparks jumped between them, real enough to almost see the blue crackling energy.
He grinned back at her and she leaned in and pressed a hard kiss to his mouth.
"Show time, super spy."
